The Unbroken Queen
by freifraufischer
Summary: Romantic Snow Queen. In the wake of Cora Mills death, Regina has to pick up the broken pieces of her life and try to build something that lasts. But with all that has happened will the town, and more importantly her son ever see her as anything more than the Evil Queen again and can the tentative steps that she and Mary Margaret took to save their family build anything that can las
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is a sequel to _Inevitability of Fate_ and takes place in canon divergent AU in which Regina forgot she was the Evil Queen during the curse and fell in alove and married a school teacher named Mary Margaret. It begins minutes after Cora's death.

* * *

Cora Mills was dead in her daughter's arms, the last act of her cruel life to deliver the cruelest thing she'd ever said to her daughter, "You would have been enough."

Mary Margaret Mills had watched for days as Cora had deconstructed her wife piece by piece. What little acceptance they had gained for their marriage a month before was shattered when it appeared that Regina had murdered Archie in cold blood. Emma had been suspicious at first, but David saw it as confirmation of everything he'd been saying. And Snow had learned how many people were only tolerant of her decision to stay with Regina.

Cora had quickly determined that the bratty princess that her daughter had bizarrely decided to marry was the key to breaking her further. "You silly girl, you let a selfish princess turn you into a dyke?"

The next time Mary Margaret had seen Regina was the clock tower. While everyone else saw the Evil Queen she saw the bruises hidden by an expensive scarf on her neck and the dead expression behind her eyes. And she knew that the only way to protect her family from Cora was to kill her.

The fact that only Johanna had died was a miracle. The fact that Johanna had died was a tragedy. Still the only person who stayed to help Mary Margaret lift Regina up was Emma. Regina pushed them both away, not wanting to seem weak in front of the towns people that would never forgive her. She walked to her car under her own power and her wife followed quietly, ready to catch her or defend her whichever was necessary. It turned out to be catching her as the Queen only managed to walk ten feet out of Gold's shop before she collapsed.

Later at the hospital Dr. Whale would express admiration for how much torture the woman had obviously taken when they found the hundreds bruises and welts on her body from her mother's treatment.

Emma had stayed with her, "Like a china doll. They never touch the face."

Mary Margaret just nodded numbly.

"How are you doing?"

"I killed my wife's mother. Regina has never been the forgiving sort."

Emma shrugged, "You two seem to forgive each other for a lot."

Snow managed a little smile, "I know you think I'm crazy. I know everyone does."

Emma shook her head, "No… actually the last few days opened my eyes to a lot of things."

"She joined forces with her mother," Snow said simply. "I'm not even sure I understand that."

"When I was in the system I saw a lot of people with the kind of eyes Regina had these last few days. She tried to warn us that she didn't have the strength. I think we all were just so used to how strong she is all the time that we assumed she was exaggerating. I think we all own a bit of this mess… not just her…and not just you."

Snow didn't say anything but watched her wife sleep… soundly because of the drugs.

"How long are they going to keep her."

"Whale wants to run some cardiac tests…"

Emma's eyes flashed with annoyance. "No Whale wants to study how she survived that much pain. I overheard him talking to the creepy nurse from the psych ward. Don't worry, I'll make sure you can take her home without too much more poking and proding."

"Thank you…"

"It's what savior's do. Apparently."

Snow thought perhaps she should say something, but Emma smiled and walked from the room.

There was no party when Regina got out of the hospital two days later with pain medication that Snow was sure she wasn't going to take, and follow up appointments that she was unlikely to keep if her reaction to Whale's bedside manner was any indication.

"Do you want something to eat? We can stop by Granny's on the way home…"

"So I can have a little judgment with my meal?"

"Regina…"

"Or so you can try and make your friends like me again. Because that went so well the last time." Regina said bitterly.

"Emma told me she was taking Henry there."

Regina didn't respond to that, and looked out the window so that Snow couldn't see her eyes.

She needed a cane to walk very far. Cora's corrections had hurt her knee badly and apparently she wasn't strong enough yet to fix it with magic, but once she got to the top of the front steps she handed the cane to Snow and opened the door herself walking into the dinner like it was the audience chamber of her castle.

No one said a word, the entire room abnormally quiet except for a few sniffles from the corner with the dwarfs. Emma and Henry were eating dinner across the room but Regina took a seat where she could see him and Emma glanced over before urging him to say hello.

He seemed torn by something but shook his head and resolutely ignored her gaze.

Regina poked at her clam chowder and said nothing. When Henry and Emma finished eating he practically bolted out the door. Emma trailed after him exasperated and offered them an apologetic smile. "He'll come around."

The clouds and dark thoughts behind Regina's eyes were obvious to Snow and she reached over and squeezed her hand. "We'll fix this."

"There is nothing left to fix. Mother was right. I was too bad for too long and no one will ever see me as anything but the Evil Queen. Not even Henry."

"Your mother was wrong." Snow said firmly. "I love you, and have loved you since the day we met."

"I was never the woman you thought I was Snow."

Snow smiled. "The hero, the monster the mother, the wife, the mayor, the terror, the lover… ? You've been all those things to me Regina. But from now on the big question to decide is who do you want to be?"

Regina looked at her with half admiration and half exasperation, "You think it's that simple?"

"No. But I don't think it being hard makes it impossible. And if there is one thing I know about you Regina, is that you never met a challenge you didn't love."

Regina rolled her eyes, but Snow was actually sure she caught sight of something she hadn't seen in them for a very long time.

Hope.


	2. Chapter 2

Regina refused to allow Mary Margaret to set up a couch on the first floor of the mansion, but insisted on making it up the stairs herself. She went to make tea in the kitchen knowing that Regina would prefer not to have an audience when she stopped hearing the grunts of pain from the other room she went to check and smelled the magic in the air. Running up the stairs she found Regina standing by the bed trying to take off her blouse.

"You… poofed yourself up here?" Regina had promised both Snow and Henry that she would try to stop using magic.

"I'm not in the mood for a lecture Mary Margaret. Magic was never my problem." Snow sighed and came over and started unbuttoning her shirt. "Henry is right, magic corrupts. It turns good people into bad ones."

Regina looked down at her face and her eyes were unreadable. "You mean like when you gave me my mother's heart telling me that she'd love me again?"

Snow looked down ashamed. "I… Regina I needed to kill her before she became the Dark One. I thought you understood."

"Killing my mother and using me and my trust in you to kill her are very different things."

The statement was cool, but it hurt like the accusation it was. "I couldn't watch her hurt you and do nothing."

"Maybe I deserved it."

Mary Margaret took her shirt off and turned her around so that Regina could see her own back in the mirror. There were long horizontal bruises from the restraints and hundreds of little red marks from the magical torture. "Regina… you are a mother. You know that this isn't how one show's their child love."

"She didn't have her heart…."

"She chooses to leave it out and deny you what you needed." She let Regina sit down and got her pajama top to put on her. "I understand if you don't want me to stay with you…"

Regina caught Mary Margaret's hand, "No… please don't leave me."

"You aren't mad at me for what I did?"

"Oh no, I'm beyond mad. But …." She looked at her, "I killed your father and you come to bed with me every night. And… she killed your mother. It's not like we've ever stopped being complicated."

"I didn't kill her because she killed my mother."

"Such the hero, thinking of the greater good," Regina said sarcastically.

"I killed her for what she was doing to you," Mary Margaret said softly as she curled in next to Regina in the bed. "I killed her for everything she's ever done to you."

Regina's back was to her so that Snow never saw the tears in her eyes. "Careful … that's exactly how the darkness takes hold in your heart."

"Are you going to stop using magic again …?"

"No." She said finally. "The magic isn't what made me a villain Snow. It was the hate."

Mary Margaret was afraid to ask if the hate was gone now…

… or if she'd just done what she'd always done and take away a bit of Regina's soul.

* * *

Regina went back to work too early, as just about everyone expected she would. The poofing happened when she was tired and frustrated with the cane she still had to lean heavily on for support. She was walking down the street from Granny's with a cup of coffee in hand when the tap tap tap of her own cane was matched by that of other.

"Very funny Gold."

"I have always aimed to bring you entertainment Regina," he said with his infuriating smile.

"What do you want?"

"Why I'd like to know when you were planning on having Cora's funeral. I'd like to pay my respects to an old friend."

"You mean to the woman you murdered so you could live?"

Rumple smiled, "Oh no dearie, you know who murdered her. You wake up in bed next to her every day. Or rather you have in the past unless you have the sudden urge to ring her delicate little neck for old time's sake."

Rumple's taunting was like a siren song, playing at the anger that Regina was desperate to control.

"Saturday. Don't rush I doubt anyone but you or I is going to be there." She stopped walking as if she'd arrived at her destination knowing she needed to get away from him."

He smiled and she wondered if he knew she was running from him as she ducked into the door only realizing when the inner office door opened where she was.

"Regina… this is a surprise," Archie said a bit nervously. "I didn't expect to see you again after…"

"You betrayed my trust and my mother framed me for your murder."

He made a shrugging motion. "What's wrong."

"I don't want to hate my wife."

Archie inhaled and stepped aside, "Why don't you come in. That's more than a lot of my patients want."


	3. Chapter 3

_A long time ago in another land…_

 _Regina had run out of the house as soon as her lessons with the tutor were over for the morning. Her mother was away doing… Regina really didn't want to know what evil… and the fourteen year old girl was taking the chance to be out in the open air and out of the stuffy house she could get. She found herself down by the washing basins where one of her few friends, a serving girl a little older than her would be working. Regina had once tried to help her with the washing but somehow her mother had found out and she'd been punished because ladies hands must not look like a washing girl's. Not that her mother's own hands showed the calluses of hard work and when Regina was a little girl she'd loved to run her fingers along them._

 _Before the understood the nature of who her mother really was she imagined they came from sword fighting and Regina fantasized about how her mother's frequent trips away were to fight dragons. It didn't take long for Regina to understand that her mother was never the hero of the story._

" _You finished!" Meghan said with her usual smile as Regina came to the fence line._

" _I must have recited the entire history of the First Ogre War faster than anyone ever," She said proudly. "Do you think you will be finished with work soon? I thought we could walk in the orchard."_

" _I shall endeavor to finish as fast as you can speak, m'lady," the other girl said teasingly, "I'll meet you under the tree."_

 _Regina couldn't help but smile. She always smiled around Meghan no matter how bad her day had gone otherwise. She went to the tree, leaning against it reading a book. After Meghan was done with her work they sometimes met and Regina read to her stories from books: about heroes and true love and happy endings._

 _Meghan arrived not long after, settling on the ground with the end of a loaf of bread and some cheese taken from the kitchen that would hold them both over until they went back to the house. The story Regina chose today was Briar Rose and her dashing true love Prince Stefan who tricked the evil dragon and saved their kingdom. As Regina reached the end of the story she found herself looking deep into Meghan's eyes and they both seemed to lean in at once and kissed… softly and with uncertainty but it seemed right to both girls. It passed after a moment and Regina smiled at her, "Please don't be afraid. I won't tell anyone."_

 _Meghan blushed, "That was my first kiss."_

 _Regina squeezed her hand, "Mine too, and that's what makes it special." They knew the house well enough to know that they shouldn't speak of what they did in the orchard and they both left at different times so they would not return together lest anyone get any ideas about what they were doing together._

 _Cora returned that evening and she called for Regina to attend to her in her study. Meghan was there unpacking her mother's trunks. "Did you have a good trip, mother?" Cora smiled and stroked her face. "I did, Regina. And I understand that your tutors are pleased. You will have to recite for me this evening so that I can hear all that you have learned."_

 _And approve of the job myself Regina knew. But she smiled and nodded. "Is there anything else you would like?"_

 _Cora smiled widely and something in Regina knew something was very wrong. She beckoned Meghan over and smiled at her as well before reaching into her chest. Regina gasped in horror but couldn't even scream. Meghan looked to be in extraordinary pain as her heart was pulled from her chest. "I would like my daughter to stop being a foolish little girl who thinks she can hide an infatuation from me in my own home."_

" _Mother, please don't hurt her."_

 _Cora smiled, "Oh I'm not going to hurt her dear. You will." She handed the heart to Regina. "Squeeze."_

 _Regina shook her head and felt the air start to leave her lungs as a tightness in her chest and throat came from her mother's hands. "You are destined for big things, Regina, and you must learn not to give into the temptations of every pretty peasant who crosses your path. If you do not squeeze I will, and I will do it until it is ash."_

 _Regina began to cry but she squeezed and Meghan cried out in indescribable pain as Regina was terrified of not doing it enough and risking Mother's backlash, or doing it too much and killing her. After several minutes Cora ordered her to stop, took the heart from Regina and shoved it with no grace or gentleness back into her chest before calling out for the footman who was standing outside the door._

" _Watch this girl pack whatever things she has and make sure she is off my land within the hour." She roughly grabbed Meghan's face. "If you ever approach my daughter again I will kill you and your family and your hearts will decorate my vault. Understand."_

 _She looked in terror and betrayal at Regina who stood silently and said nothing._

 _Once she was gone Cora smiled and Regina and brushed her tears away. "You will be a queen and no king wants a bride who looks at other ladies the way you do. The next time I have to teach this lesson will be much harsher. Am I clear?"_

 _Regina looked down, "Yes mother."_

 _Cora smiled and stroked her hair. "When you are queen and have your husband under control you will be able to have all the lovers you wish, but not before."_

* * *

Storybrooke, Present Day.

Regina walked up to the small house on a side street not far from the ocean and left a small brown wrapped book on the poach; inside a storybook of leather and illuminated pictures. A note inside simply read, "You deserved a hero. I'm sorry I was never one."


	4. Chapter 4

"Are you sure you don't want me to go with you?" Snow said quietly as she watched Regina put several wooden boxes into a large leather bag. Snow hated the vault and avoided it as much as she could. The beating hearts from the wall of Regina's… all she was told belonging to people not in Storybrooke and no longer living… unnerved her and the addition of Cora's things only made the place reek of dark magic more.

It didn't feel like her wife the way their house did, but rather like _her_. Her was how she'd taken to thinking of the Evil Queen, the woman who had hunted her and the woman who had threatened her and the woman who had killed her father. She couldn't, not matter how hard she tried, reconcile that woman with her wife who was difficult and cold and moody but not evil. It was how they'd found some peace in their marriage. But this place, and Regina's ease in it, reminded Mary Margaret that the Evil Queen was not some nightmare who looked like her wife, but in fact was her wife. She dreaded to know what other reminders lay hidden in the closed off rooms of this place.

"Do I want my greatest victim standing next to me as I return the hearts my mother took from people still living in town? I know you have picked up a lot of tricks as a politician's wife Mary Margaret but don't you think that would be a bit grotesque?"

"It's not like you are asking me to stand by you at a news conference where you talk about prostitutes."

"I'm pretty sure most of the town would be disturbed to know that you know what a prostitute is." Regina observed.

"Regina… I've had children." Snow objected.

"I don't have a high opinion of your ex husband dear, but I'd never call him a pro." Regina said dryly.

Mary Margaret wanted to defend David, she'd maintained a close friendship with him, but his behavior during investigation into Archie's apparent murder had carried the flavor of a witch hunt for Regina. A literal one as Regina had pointed out.

"Emma could do this with you, you know." Mary Margaret put a hand on her arm. "She would."

"Dr. Hopper thinks that this would somehow help me dealing with people. I can't pretend that I can just talk to you, Emma and Henry. Especially as Henry isn't talking to me much these days and I am technically the mayor of the town."

"You could wait until after your mother's funeral…"

"Gold is coming and I'm not sure I trust myself to be around people after a friendly visit from Rumplestiltskin over my mother's dead body. I need to do this first." Regina shouldered her bag with the hearts to return.

"I can still go to the funeral too…"

Regina smiled and shook her head, "Take it from one murderer to another, going to your victims funeral and lurking on the edges is really tacky. If you kill someone you should own it."

Snow looked particularly pained but Regina softened a little and squeezed her arm, "I know why you did what you did. And I will forgive you for it, but pretending it didn't happen isn't the road to my forgiveness." Regina kissed her on the forehead.

"Is there a road to your forgiveness?" Mary Margaret asked quietly.

Regina smiled a little sadly, "Just let me be mad for a bit? The bug thinks part of my problem is that I've never been allowed to be mad in a healthy way."

"Archie said that?" Mary Margaret sounded relieved.

"I'm still not sure I buy cursed medical expertise but at least it's better than telling me not to use magic." Regina shrugged. "I'll come home after the funeral and you can pretend you know how to cook."

Mary Margaret crossed her arms, "You like my casserole."

"I also like torture and dark magic but that doesn't mean I should pretend they aren't terrible."

But there was a twinkle in her eyes and instead of being insulted Snow smiled. Her Regina was struggling to forgive and that was more than she could have ever hoped for.

* * *

Regina expected to be the only person at her mother's funeral. She lay her hand on the great marble coffin and cried inconsolably for what seemed like an eternity. Here she was, a queen, a terror, one of the greatest practitioners of magic in all the realms and the only one to stand witness to her life was a daughter that Regina knew she could never really love.

Processing her mother's lack of a heart was something she hadn't even begin to think about clearly. Her last words and the love in her eyes that Regina had never seen had played over and over in her mind as she watched Mary Margaret sleep next to her in bed. She would have called it foolishness once but she knew better. It was bravery. She knew Regina's dark thoughts and needed to show her that she trusted and believed in her. And each moment she wanted to reach out and hurt her she felt horrible for even thinking it.

And now she felt guilty for thinking about Snow while her mother's cold body lay out in front of her. She was so lost in thought that she didn't hear footsteps as Gold entered the room, laying large bouquet off red roses on the coffin. "Is this a joke?"

"Not at all Dearie, despite everything I was very fond of your mother."

"When she wasn't trying to kill you," Regina sneered through the tears.

"The fact that she was trying to kill me was ….actually rather charming." Rumple shrugged. "And your rage… how are you nursing that along?"

"I'm not having this conversation with you Rumple. I don't need your voice in my ear."

"Of course you do, dearie, because I'm telling you that your mother did you no favors and you need to let go of the anger this time."

Regina gritted her teeth, "Don't you think I'm trying?"

He smiled, "No, you just think you are because your rage is like a security blanket that you think keeps you strong, but it's not."

She looked over him with fire in her eyes wishing she could hurt the bastard, but she'd long ago learned that physically attacking him only got one a high pitched giggle. She wanted to ask who had taught her that her rage was so important. That it was all she was worth. She was about to say something when they both heard a clearing voice.

Emma Swan was standing in the doorway, a hand on Henry's shoulder. He was dressed in a white shirt and tie and looked at his mother seemingly confused but bit his lower lip in determination. He walked over to her and hugged her and she instinctively hugged him back. "Why are you here?"

"I thought…" he said quietly, "I was scared when I was worried you would die and I thought you might need a hug mom."

Regina was stunned into silence, and Gold raised an eyebrow but Regina ignored him, instead looking over at Emma and mouthed 'thank you.'

After a moment she let him out of the hug and he looked at the coffin. "The book says she was an evil woman and bad to you."

"She… wanted what was best for me Henry. She just didn't know how to let me decide for myself. And loving someone isn't as easy as good and bad."

He looked up at her and she feared what he was thinking. "You aren't trying to hurt anyone?"

Emma looked like she wanted to say something, but Gold spoke. "Your mother is a complicated woman, but she is rarely good at hiding something like that Henry. Look into her eyes and you'll know the truth."

He looked up into her eyes and there was no evil there, only pain, and love, and he hugged her again.


	5. Chapter 5

Snow was off at her semi-regular (when there were no villains trying kill everyone) community soft ball game with the dwarfs and red. Regina begged off, mumbling something about only so much hanging out with the dwarfs that she could manage. Her wife had for once not tried to drag her out to socialize and with the afternoon to herself she descended the stairs of her vault and started to slowly go through her mother's things. They had dealt with the hearts first and Regina had moved the traveling cabinet to the side, but there was still so much all over that made the space feel so much like Mother's rather than her own.

About an hour in she heard footsteps and sighed, "Mary Margaret you could not have gotten 9 innings in unless you really fell afoul of the mercy rule."

"It's me, Mom."

Regina looked up from the magical book she had gotten lost in, "Henry..."

He looked around at the half cleaned mess and raised an eyebrow. "You always told me to keep my room clean."

She shrugged with a half smile embarrassed. "I'm trying."

He seemed as nervous as she felt, "Do you think I can help... or is it all ... evil magic."

Regina tried to keep herself from reacting to the 'e' word, "Where are you supposed to be today? Emma's working I know."

He seemed confused for a moment and she shrugged. "I'm the mayor I still sign her pay checks."

He shrugged, "Granny's."

Regina bit her lower lip. "I'll tell you what, let me call Emma and tell her where you are so she doesn't worry and you can help me sort through my mother's things if you promise to be careful and if you see anything magical you let me deal with it."

He scrunched his face, "Isn't most of her stuff magical?"

"True. But you should probably learn about this stuff too. Magic isn't going away in this town." She touched his shoulder before taking out her phone and walking up stairs. You couldn't get cell phone reception in underground vaults as strange as that might sound.

She was right, Emma hadn't known where he was, but she promised to bring him to Granny's when Emma's shift was over and their awkward co-parenting was off to a smashing start. Regina was too happy he'd even come to her to rage about the indignity of having to ask another person for permission to spend the afternoon with her son.

Mostly she started by having Henry sort through books, she showed him what a few of the magical languages looked like so that he could put the elfish texts separate from the Norse ones and from the ones written in English. He watched as she sorted through her mother's potions kit and combined ingredients with her own. "So you are doing magic again?"

Regina dreaded the question a bit, "Magic is part of me Henry. I ... need to find some balance with it. But just giving it up would be like giving up your hand or your sense of smell."

"But it made you do ..."

"The magic only gave me the ability to do those things Henry," she said quietly, regretting that she had to have this conversation with Henry but knowing that avoiding it did no good. "If I didn't have magic I'd find some other way to have hurt people. I was... I am very angry a lot of the time."

Henry seemed to be listening, trying to understand, "And you hurt people when you are angry?"

"I ... have ... but I'm trying to learn better," Regina said carefully.

He tilted his head, "You were angry at me for bringing Emma to town... and at Mary Margaret for what she did to Cora..."

Regina shook her head and resisted the urge to hold his hand, "I was never angry at you. Emma yes... and myself... but never you." She paused her sorting through potions ingredients. "I'm mad at Mary Margaret, but I'm also mad at myself, I've never been strong enough to face my mother and I knew she'd destroy everything I loved and I was letting her do it again."

"Emma says she hurt you. To make you go along." Regina was glad that Henry couldn't see the still raw marks on her body. "How can you fear your mom?"

Regina's eyes watered up, and she couldn't tell him that the reason was that if he could ask that question he wasn't afraid of her. "Sometimes parents ... hurt you. Sometimes not meaning to and sometimes ... they do."

"Like your mother and Daniel?"

Regina was surprised, "How do you know his name?"

"It's in the book, I just didn't understand it before." He said as if it was obvious.

The book of course. "She ... my mother was just not a good person Henry. But she was still my mother."

He nodded and she prayed to god that he didn't actually understand.

He moved a stack of books where she asked and she saw his eyes kept moving over to the wall of hearts where the soft muffling of the beats came from. With a wave of her hand she quieted them. "Do they belong to people?"

She wanted to wince but... this was a conversation they were going to have to have. "Yes."

"How many?"

"A lot, I ... lost count." She admitted, somehow feeling that was worse than giving an actual number.

"Can't you give them back?"

She wanted to cry but didn't, "No I can't Henry. Those are from our world and the people are long gone."

His eyebrows knit together, "Why do you keep them? Can I see one."

Regina shook her head, "No Henry. I don't really think that's a good idea. I keep them because throwing away people's hearts seems ... wrong... and because it reminds me that without my family I can become a monster."

He glanced over at her and she just wanted to crawl under a rock. "I think if you are worried about being a monster, mom, you probably aren't."

She gave him a smile and resisted the urge to hug him. That would have to come in his own time. "Do you think you could go through that trunk Henry. It's my mother's clothes but I need you to see if you can find anything. A good witch hides things."

He nodded, and began shifting through cloth and corsets... he held up something, "Is this like Salizar Slytherin's locket?"

She wanted to tell him no, but it was her mothers, so best be careful. She took it from him and opened it carefully. On one side was a mini portrait of Cora, and on the other was one of Regina in her crown and wedding dress.

"Is that what you looked like?" He asked, peering over her shoulder. "I mean I've seen the pictures in the book but..."

"This was painted right before I married the King. I ... didn't realize she kept it."

He put a hand on hers and she smiled a little closing the locket and putting it in her pocket. He started to go through the pile of clothes again, "Mom... I think I found something."

She came back from the few steps she'd taken and felt where he was pointing, there was something sewn into the lining of the dress. With one of the gentleness that she should have used she ripped at the seams and a small scroll fell out.

"That's... a curse." Henry observed. She raised an eyebrow, "I'm learning about these things."

She opened the scroll and frowned.

Henry tilted his head, "What is it, mom?"

"The curse of the empty hearted. Don't worry it's not important."

She slipped the curse scroll into her pocket and smiled, "Come on, we should get going and I'll buy you some ice cream before we go meet Emma."

He grinned and they left the dank musty vault behind for the sunshine of the outside world.


	6. Chapter 6

Regina and Henry stopped for ice cream first, and she felt mildly guilty about letting him have ice cream before dinner. But at the moment she was just enjoying being with her son and for once it would be Emma's job to get him to eat his vegetables after having fun with the cool mom. She put her hand on Henry's back but resisted the urge to put her arm around him. One afternoon together wasn't reconciliation and she was starting to understand that if she ever wanted him back it needed to be on his terms. Even if it was killing her.

They stopped in front of the diner and she fixed his collar as she saw Emma coming from the other side of the street. "Madam Mayor."

Regina raised an eyebrow. "Am I still that?"

"Well you are still the only one authorized to sign the pay checks so I hope you are." Emma smiled at Henry, "Did you have fun?"

"I learned to read Elvish!" He said with a wide grin.

"Half elvish. And he's starting." Regina laughed.

"That's a thing?" Emma asked surprised.

Regina grinned, "Someday you are going to want to do something with all that raw magic of yours Emma, and it will be hilarious. Just try not to learn from the Harry Potter books."

"I thought you liked the Harry Potter books, Mom?" Henry asked.

"I do, and surprisingly some of the things in there do work. Just... not always the way JK Rowling says they do."

Emma raised an eyebrow, "Henry could you go inside and get us a table, your mom and I need to talk."

He looked between the two of them but decided to do what he was asked, running up the stairs and into Granny's. "How did it go?" Emma asked quietly.

"It was a start." Regina shrugged. "There are things I wish he'd never find out."

Emma gave an awkward smile, "I think in that I have an advantage. I'm sorry, even you should have a right to your secrets."

"I still have a few." Regina said cryptically. Just then a man came out of the diner holding a bag and slowed as he approached them. "Sheriff..." though he looked at Regina and Regina narrowed her eyes as he passed them both and walked down the street.

"Who is that?"

"Greg Mendell. He's a stranger who came into town, we're working on getting him to leave without seeming too Children of the Corn but he seems to like it here."

Regina frowned, "I really did seem to fail at making an unpleasantly cursed town."

"Don't worry Regina," Emma pat her arm, "We all make mistakes."

Regina kept an eye on the man's retreating form an uneasy feeling settling over her.

"Are you going to go into the office tomorrow?"

Regina blinked for a moment, "What?"

"I wasn't kidding about you being the only one authorized to sign the pay checks."

Regina shook her head, "How did I end up working for all of you."

"Isn't that why they call it public service, Madam Mayor?" Emma grinned.

...

Regina didn't go straight home, instead taking a walk along the waterfront thinking about recent events, fiddling with the curse scroll in her pocket. By the time she did head home it was almost dark and she saw Mary Margaret looking out the window.

They hadn't spoken much in the last few days. Normalcy was hard to hold onto when deep anger and deep betrayal lingered after what had happened over her mother's heart, but Regina had to admit that it wasn't the worst thing either of them had ever done to each other. She inhaled before opening the door, "How badly did you lose your softball game?"

"We won actually," Mary Margaret kissed her on the cheek. "It was touch and go because Walter fell asleep on third base when I hit a home run. But we got him going."

Regina shook her head, "I'm not sure I'll ever understand your attachment to those dwarfs. Narcolepsy isn't exactly a charming trait, he should get that checked out. Or stop playing World of Warcraft at 3AM."

"Well, to be fair, the only reason you know he plays World of Warcraft at 3AM is because you do." Mary Margaret laughed and handed her wife a glass of scotch. "Emma called and said you and Henry had a good time today."

"I think good is probably stretching it." Regina sighed. "He helped me go through mother's things."

Snow sat down on the sofa next to her, frowning, "You found something."

"I found any number of things." Regina said as she sipped her drink.

"Regina..."

She sighed and took the scroll out from her pocket and handed it to Snow.

"What is this?"

"It's a curse."

Mary Margaret sighed and gave her wife a look, "I'm married to a sometimes evil sorceress. I know what a curse looks like. What is this one specifically?"

"The Curse of the Empty Hearted. It... it makes someone think they love you."

"Why would... oh." Snow said quietly, a realization coming over her.

"My mother brought it with her for a reason," Regina was glad she didn't have to say it.

"She ... your mother was a cruel woman Regina."

"So am I, Mary Margaret. And my own son isn't sure if he loves me..."

Mary Margaret looked at her sharply, "Regina Mills, that's not what is going on with Henry. He loves you, he just doesn't know if it's alright to love you."

"That's better?"

Mary Margaret shrugged, "It's better than your mother coming here, torturing you, trying to destroy your family and planning on using this curse on you."

"Is it bad," Regina asked, "that I was almost happy to see that because it meant she wanted me to love her?"

"No." She said and pulled Regina to lean into her and wrapped her arm around her protectively. "But this is an evil thing to do to someone you love. We should destroy it."

Regina nodded silently, a tear starting to fall down her face. She held out a hand and as she unfolded her fingers a fireball appeared. Snow held the curse over the fire for a moment before dropping it in and letting it burn up. Regina closed her fingers again and the fire was gone, and she was crying fully now, burying her face in her wife's shoulder.


	7. Chapter 7

David Nolan preferred swords to guns. But guns were what the sheriff's department issued and Emma wasn't quite used to the idea of carrying around a sword yet. Or having others do so. So he was out at the shooting range practicing. It was the local gun club that mostly taught hunting safety classes to the town's young people and since the curse broke had set up an archery range not far from the gun range. He was looking at his (not spectacular but respectable) target paper in hand to give to Emma wondering if he could sell how he'd taken out the targets shoulder with extreme prejudice as an attempt to wound when he walked straight into Mary Margaret knocking the bundle of arrows she was holding from her hands.

"I'm so sorry..." He bent down with her to try and help pick them up but they'd both banged heads.

Mary Margaret rubbed her head but smiled, "It's okay, I have a thick skull."

"Me too," he said awkwardly. "Arrows again?"

"Regina thought I should do something to bring me focus."

David wanted to say a lot of things to that but felt ashamed. He hadn't covered himself in glory over his ex-wife's relationship. "She's right. You were the best archer in the land. I think we all need to find a way to rediscover who we were."

She chuckled, "I'll tell Regina you said that."

"I very much doubt the Queen wants to hear my name."

She frowned at the use of the title. "She's trying to find balance just like the rest of us. It would be nice if people at least tried to help since it would be in everyone's best interests not to have her regress."

He shook his head, "You can't applaud someone because they have decided not to be a monster."

Mary Margaret tilted her head, "I suppose not. Should I applaud you when you decide not to be a judgmental..." She didn't finish her sentence. Regina might have a cleaver insult but Snow just threw up her hand, "Never mind."

David recognized the look of disappointment and inhaled, "I'm sorry. That wasn't fair. I'm glad she's trying."

"You're still hoping that I'll realize I made the wrong choice."

"I'd be lying if I said I didn't think so." David admitted.

"Did it ever occur to you that attitude wouldn't make me pick you even if I didn't choose her?" She tilted her head to the side and David was momentarily stunned as Snow walked passed him.

He knew he should talk to someone. The anger and confusion he was feeling wasn't new and wasn't getting better. But it was a moment like this that he remembered how many of his friends were Snow's first. Instead he tried to take a walk to clear his head when he saw the last person he wanted to see. Mayor Mills picking apples from the tree outside of town hall.

"Does anyone eat them anymore?"

She turned her head over her shoulder, "I do. And it's the season to do cider pressing. So everyone else's loss is my gain."

He suspected it wasn't but jumped the little white picket fence and started to help her impulsively. She raised an eyebrow but didn't object.

"I made an ass of myself with Snow today," He finally said.

"I've been doing that on a regular basis. She forgives. It's one of her annoyingly charming qualities." Regina said quietly.

"I told her that I didn't think you deserved applause for not being a bad person."

"You are right." Regina said without batting an eye.

"Do you enjoy it?" He asked, "I mean you seemed to when you ripped my heart out."

She did smile a little at the memory and he regretted asking, but the answer was more thoughtful, "Enjoy is not quite the right word. The dark magic rushes through my body... when I was first learning I used to get sick at that feeling. Like every part of my body rebelled against what I was doing. But it got easier."

She looked over at him, "The first time I was in a fight. One where there was actual death not dueling. It was one of your knights and I ran him through with a sword. I remember throwing up. But the next time there was this rush that ... it made me feel invincible.

"Darkness comes in more than just magic." She didn't laugh or sneer.

"I suppose it does." He agreed. "Are you feeling the darkness now?"

She seemed to debate answering, "No. It's different. I just feel... sad all the time."

"Sad... but you won?"

"Winning feels very different when you turn everything to ash that you touch."

His eyes narrowed and he looked at the apple in his hand, "I know how that feels. I'm not living quite up to being the man I want to be." He was surprised admitting it.

And surprised when Regina responded, "I just want to stop being angry all the time. I want to stop hurting people."

"That's ..." He looked at her with new eyes. "Something I think I could use too." Never in his life did he think he would have anything in common with this woman.

Regina tilted her head, "Would you like to come over tomorrow and help me press the cider. It's hard work but ... if you aren't afraid there are a few bottles of the best damn hard cider you've ever had in it for you."

And to his own surprise he smiled, "I think I'd love to try some. I suppose if no one else is drinking it there is more for both of us."

Somehow under the three that was a symbol of one of her most terrible crimes Prince Charming and the Evil Queen finally started to understand each other.


	8. Chapter 8

Mary Margaret and Emma came home to hear the sound of singing coming from the garage. Raising an eyebrow to her mother Emma nodded to the sound when she distinctly heard David's voice. When they got to the door the place smelt of apple and there were bottle after bottle of amber liquid on every surface recently filled and garbage bags full of the pulpy remains. Yet in the center, of it all with two open bottles from Regina's stash the Evil Queen and Prince Charming were engaged in a battle of who could come up with the most ludicrous verse to an old drinking song from the Enchanted Forest.

Emma and her mother stood staring in the doorway, the Sheriff raising an eyebrow, "That's new."

"And unexpected," Snow agreed.

Regina looked up half guilty but couldn't keep her composure and burst out laughing. Which only made David do the same.

"How drunk do you think they are?" Emma said quietly. After all Mary Margaret had been married to both of them.

"Very. But no one's dead and nothing's on fire so that's a plus."

She moved into the garage and picked up the bottle open between them, "Breaking into things early?"

"Of course not," Regina said indignantly. "That's not how fermentation works. It was from last year. But I wanted to show him how I made the best damn cider in the state of Maine."

"Have you even been out of town more than once in your life?" Emma said, helping her father to his feet.

"Of course." She held up three fingers. "Twice."

Emma nodded her eyes big. "Always pictured you as more the angry sort of drunk."

"What if I want to stop being angry." She took Mary Magaret's help up but touched her hands to both sides of her wife's face. "Do you know that you are the fairest in all the realms?"

Snow started to blush. "Regina why don't we go inside and get you some coffee."

"And with that the former queen made a sad face. "I don't want coffee."

Mary Margaret looked at Emma beseechingly. "Don't look at me, I think I'm going to get Prince Charming here home as well."

"He's not so bad you know." Regina said as if she was whispering but decidedly not. "He can live."

Emma raised an eyebrow, Mary Margaret shrugged as if to say 'what do you do?'

Once they were inside, and Emma got David into the bug, Mary Margaret raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"He needed to relax."

"And so did you apparently," she said dryly. But absent the drinking companion Regina had become more subdued. "You killed my mother. My son hates me. And I just want to stop hurting. It didn't hurt for a little bit."

Mary Margaret nodded. "The two of you could use a chance not to hurt. Just try not to make a habit of self medication."

"Why not? I've been doing it for years."

"You've also spent a life time ripping people's hearts out and throwing fireballs. That doesn't make them good coping strategies."

"Fireballs aren't bad," she pouted.

"Okay, you can keep the fireballs."

"And maybe the occasional heart?" Regina asked.

Mary Margaret rolled her eyes but leaned in to kiss her mostly still drunk wife. "Talk to me after parent teacher conferences on Tuesday."

Outside Greg Mendel sat in his rental car, a telephoto lens on his camera, snapping pictures of the Evil Queen and her wife kissing before heading to bed.

...

The next morning Regina Mills, dressed immaculately and looking every inch the put together mayor, arrived in the Sheriff's station and handed Emma an envelope.

"Is this the pay off for not telling the entire town you don't sing off key by very off color songs while drunk with your enemies?"

Regina rolled her eyes, "No it's the pay check you were so keen for me to sign. I thought perhaps you might buy some adult clothing with it."

"It was kind of nice to see you happy you know. And my dad."

"Enough alcohol will do that."

"I mean it. It... was kind of nice to know that you are human." Emma said. "I ... don't know how you and my father ended up drinking together but I think letting it all out was good for him too."

Regina stiffened. "We both love the same woman. I doubt we're ever going to be friends. But your father isn't the biggest idiot in creation."

"Is that a compliment?"

Regina rolled her eyes and Emma smiled. "Would you like to see if about having Henry sleep over at the house tonight?"

Regina tilted her head, "He'd be alright with that?"

"Just the night. To try it out." Emma clarified.

"His bedroom is waiting for him."

"Why don't you pick him up after his appointment with Archie tonight?"

Regina relaxed but shifted, unsure how to express what she was thinking, "Thank you, Miss. Swan."

Emma smiled. "Thanks for not killing my dad."

"That's an ongoing struggle," Regina said shaking her head as she was leaving.

She left the sheriff's station and headed down the street towards town hall. It was early still and Regina cut through an alley when Greg Mendel appeared from nowhere. He stuck something leather around her wrist and a taser her side shocking her repeatedly until she fell to the ground and proceeded to kick her.

Before she lost consciousness all Regina could think was why wasn't her magic working...


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: This chapter contains non-graphic descriptions of torture._

* * *

Regina didn't pick up Henry after his appointment like she had agreed and Archie called Emma to make sure he had gotten her message right. The sheriff knew something was wrong immediately as Regina would never have blown off Henry and immediately called her mother.

Mary Margaret had been working late at the school setting up the gym for the eighth grade dance when her phone buzzed, expecting it to be Regina, "Hey Emma..."

"Where is your wife?" Emma said quickly.

Snow shrugged, "Not sure I haven't talked to her since she went to meet you this morning. Hey do you think the kids would like a mirror ball or is that too cheesy."

"Mirror balls are only fun if it's dark and I'm pretty sure you don't want a dark room and a bunch of kids going through puberty." Emma said automatically. "Regina was supposed to take Henry home with her to stay overnight at the house. She never showed."

The sound of something dropping to a crash on the other end of the line made Emma jump, "Mary Margaret..."

"I've got to call her..."

"Tried that... no answer," Emma said.

"Her office, maybe she's just left her phone at home... I'll meet you there." The phone went dead and Emma got the distinct feeling that Regina Mills hadn't left her phone at home ever in her life.

When she got to the town hall Mary Margaret was already there pulling a big ring of keys from her purse.

"I thought those were the mayor's keys."

Mary Margaret looked over, "We thought the towns people would feel safer if I was the custodian of them rather than Regina. And so... you know... temptations."

"Can't she ..." Emma made a vague motion around her body, "Like anywhere."

"Optics. I'm a politician's wife and my father was a king. You learn these things." She opened the door and looked around at the empty office, heading straight to Regina's desk.

"She must have left early."

But her mother was even whiter than usual as she held up the neatly organized day planner. "Emma she didn't even make it in this morning. She never turned over the new page."

"Maybe she just forgot..."

"She's a creature of habit and ..."

Emma nodded, "Henry."

"We've got to find her, Emma. There are people in this town that would ..."

For all of their worries about what Regina would do to others it was the first time Emma realized that her mother's fears were more around what her wife's many enemies would do to her. "We'll find her."

Mary Margaret nodded. "Ruby. We need to get Ruby to help."

"Because she... has an encyclopedic knowledge of coffee orders?" Emma asked with a raised eyebrow.

"No because she can smell her."

"What about the GPS on her phone..."

"You really think Regina let anyone put a GPS tracker on her phone?"

"Point. Okay. Werewolf it is..."

* * *

It started eight hours before. The pain coursing through her body. She'd tortured enough people to know that Greg Mendel had some expertise. Or he was just a sadist. Which were not mutually exclusive. The electric jolts varied in length and intensity, as did the time between them. He didn't even start talking until she was well into the torture session.

But that might have had to do with the fact that she wasn't screaming nor was she asking for reasons or begging for mercy. Which wasn't to say that she was quiet. The pained noises coming from her abused body were practically inhuman.

He was watching her, she knew, looking for signs of weakness and she had no intention of showing him any. Instead she focused on the pain. Letting it drive her need to make sure she survived this to hurt him back. She had a broken rib she was sure and wondered if it was the same one her mother had broken.

"You aren't even surprised," he observed.

When the pain stopped this time she inhaled shallowly and raised an eyebrow. About the only thing she could do. "You think there isn't a line of people who would like to kill me?"

"Being a monster will do that." He folded his arms, "You don't even remember me do you?" Regina braced herself when she heard the click of the knob that proceeded another shock. "Where is my father?"

The pain stopped long enough for her to answer. She didn't simply because she didn't understand the question. "I don't know what you are talking about."

"She told me you'd say that."

The pain came again and Regina wondered if that smell was her own skin being burned by the electrode leads. "You'll have to be more specific."

"And you'll have to figure out which of the thousands of people you've screwed over I am so you can answer my god damn questions!"

He didn't get his answer this time either because she passed out from the pain.

* * *

Ruby agreed to help immediately, handing off her tables to Granny and the three women walked out into the street as Emma watched a little incredulously as the waitress sniffed the air and started to walk with purpose towards the sheriff's station. "That was the last place anyone saw her..." Emma supplied.

"The trail is cold. She hasn't been here for hours..." they walked down an alleyway and Snow shinned a flash light, until it landed on a broken high heel."

"That's ... how did you even spot that," Emma said quietly taking her own flash light and scanning the ground now.

"Snow was the best tracker in the Enchanted Forest," Ruby said with a bit of pride.

"I learned from the best. You were better," Mary Margaret said now moving aside a few trash bags.

"Best without a wolf's nose," Ruby nodded gravely, "There doesn't seem like much of a struggle..."

"Except for the blood over here," Mary Margaret said grimly, her breath catching in her throat.

It was a few drops but Emma had to agree it was clearly blood. And relatively fresh. She took out her phone and tried Regina again. There was a echoed ringing from a dumpster and Emma went over digging through until she pulled out a very expensive looking designer handbag. "Sure looks like a struggle to me. And someone who doesn't know your wife has turned off the GPS on her blackberry."

* * *

"You know I've been watching you for weeks. Storming around this town like the queen in her castle. The Evil Queen. Such a cartoon villain." He stalked around her, tied down to the gurney. "Playing house with the pretty little princess who doesn't know any better." Regina's first impulse was a sharp reply about not talking about her wife. Her second was to say nothing and ignore him inches from her face. "Or are you playing another game in that bedroom of yours. It takes a twisted witch to destroy someone that way."

"I love Mary Margaret... she's my wife."

He laughed, "The Evil Queen falls in love with Snow White. Old Walt really got that one wrong did he? I suppose Cinderella is a real stuck up bitch too."

"Actually rather down to earth from what I've observed. Though working as a maid at Granny's isn't exactly indentured servitude."

He gave her a quick jolt for the snide comment. She smiled knowing it got under his skin.

"What's your game with the boy? Steal him too? Some post millennial rainbow flag draped version of Leave it to Beaver?"

"Henry is my son. I didn't steal him."

"I bet the sheriff would disagree." He folded his arms.

She took the break from the pain to try and catch her bearings again. She thought she smelt salt in the air but she wasn't sure if that wasn't the thin crust of it forming around her eyes from the watering. "Emma... no she wouldn't. Emma gave him up."

"Adoption over baby snatching. You graduated Regina."

And then she knew. "Owen. Owen Flynn."

He laughed without humor, "So glad destroying my family was so memorable to you, Regina. Where is my father?"

"He left. Right after you did."

"And he never contacted his only son?" He shook his head and she braced again even before the click of the knob because the pain was coming.

* * *

"What do you mean you can't get a sent..." Mary Margaret demanded "I once watched you track a doe for four days in the middle of a rain storm. She's bleeding..." She pointed emphatically down at the ground where the blood drops where.

Ruby shifted and shrugged, "It's gone too cold."

Emma had let the two old friends talk while she walked around the alley looking at the clues seemingly but also watching the waitress.

"She didn't just disappear into thin air..."

"To be fair... that is something Regina can do, Snow."

Emma spoke up, "But she didn't. Which leaves a lot of questions. Like why aren't you helping us."

Ruby turned around surprised, "What..."

"You're not a good liar." Emma said, tapping her head, "Super power."

"Red... what is she talking about..."

The waitress looked between the two of them, desperately caught, "He said he just needed to ask her some questions... and if I could keep you distracted he could find out what she was doing with you."

"Doing with me?" Mary Margaret shook her head in disbelief.

"Come on, Snow, this is Regina we're talking about. The woman who seduced a genie into killing your father and terrorized a kingdom to get to you."

"That..." Mary Margaret shook her head, "She did that ... a long time ago."

"Snow she tried to kill your daughter with a poisoned pastry a few months ago!"

"That was a ..."

"It was not an accident. Because one accidentally bakes with cursed apples because you mix them up with your non-cursed apples." Red said with frustration. "Can't you see she's lying..."

Emma pulled a gun and pointed it right at Ruby's head. "I think you better start really talking before I arrest you for conspiracy..."

Ruby bit her lip, "He said he just wanted to know what she did to his father."

* * *

"Do you know how easy it was to get that waitress talking about you?" He laughed as he rapidly turned on and off the electricity. "I probably could have gotten basically anyone in town to tell me the story. You screwed so many of them over. What is your body count? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred? Five hundred?"

She finally started to scream. Blood curdling and animalistic.

"How many people? Can you not even remember what you did to my father?" Regina wondered how much more her heart would take. And if the darkness that tainted it made the inevitable heart failure come sooner. She realized hours before that she would die in this room.

"I don't blame her you know. For falling for your trap. You're pretty and I'm sure not a bad fuck. But how anyone spends that much time around you and doesn't recognize the monster she must be stupider than the average princess. Though given how much Little Red Riding Hood wanted to jump her bones I wonder if it was just lust."

There were a few security monitors in the room showing a hallway, but Owen was so wrapped up in his obsession that he'd stopped checking them long ago. So it was Regina who saw the three figures creeping up the hall, a sword, gun, and bow and arrow in hand.

"Where is my father?!"

"I killed him." Regina said simply. "Right after you ran. I was so angry. So angry all the time. I shot him in the head and buried him at your old camp site."

Greg had to have known that his father was dead but he shook his head, "You're lying."

She smiled, "You're right. I can't remember them all. But it was the first time I'd fired a gun. Such a messy thing when the human brain goes out an exit hole."

She knew the more horrific details she gave the less likely he was to look behind him.

"Not as messy as your death is going to be."

He went to reach for the knob when he turned to see Snow White punched him in the face and kneed him in the groin before Emma and David wrestled him to the ground.

"That bitch killed my father... she killed my father..."

Mary Margaret went over to release Regina from the binding and pull the cuff from her wrist. Regina cried looking up at her face, "It's what monsters do, Owen. Destroy... everything..."

And Regina Mills lay her head back and allowed herself to cry. Not from the pain. But from the pain she'd caused.


	10. Chapter 10

The Blue Fairy had come when Snow called, and David and Emma helped get Regina up the stairs of the mansion into the bed. Emma kept suggesting the hospital but the only thing Regina hand mumbles was "with or without magic I'll kill Whale," and no one really wanted to tempt that fait. Once the magic restraining cuff was removed more color returned to her face and she actually started to sleep.

"She's been through much. She will recover but she needs rest."

Henry, who refused to leave her side looked across the bed to where his stepmother was sitting, and Mary Margaret looked up at the fairy. "Have you met Regina? Stubborn. Unable to sit still."

The corner of the Mother Superior's mouth turned up, "I am familiar with the Queen's nature yes. Still it would be best if she rests."

Henry reached over and touched his sleeping mother's hand. "How... we let this happen."

"No..." Regina stirred a bit and looked over at Henry with a tired smile. "No one's fault."

Mary Margaret had gotten up to walk Blue out and Henry was alone by his mother's bedside, "Well there is the bad guy who hurt you."

Regina shook her head, "Revenge. He was getting what he thought he deserved." Mary Margaret stopped just side the bedroom and listened. "Lots of people with reasons to hate me Henry. Really hate me. Even if I lead a blameless life from now on there would be a very long line of people around to toast at the news of my passing."

Henry shook his head. "This is my fault."

Regina, despite looking and feeling like death pushed herself up on her elbows. "What?"

"It's all my fault. If I had just lived with you under the curse none of this would have happened, your mom, this man, you wouldn't even remember ..."

Regina reached over and touched his chin. "Henry I cast a curse out of vengeance. And Owen... I did a terrible thing to Owen Flynn. I'm the villain here. And you are in no way responsible for the consequences of my many mistakes." Regina whispered so that only he could hear her, "Besides, Emma's not entirely terrible to have around town."

Henry smiled, but then shook his head, "You aren't a villain. You're my mom. I don't want to lose you."

Regina smiled and wrapped her arms around him in a hug. The first one that they both relaxed into in ages and her crawled into bed with her like he did when he was a small boy and lay his head on her chest so that he could listen to her heart. And assure himself that she was alive.

Outside the room Mary Margaret sighed and smiled, choosing not to interrupt Regina and Henry. But her mind kept returning to the man who had done this to her family. The man who had nearly taken Regina from her.

She had seen his eyes. She'd seen revenge dominate someone before. And she wouldn't lose her family to that again.

* * *

It was a few days after the rescue and Emma had David helping her sort through the evidence they'd collected from Greg Mendell's room. There were still many questions to be asked. How he had found the town again, and where he had gotten the leather cuff that restrained Regina's magic. There were also a box of pictures of Regina, Mary Margaret, Henry, and the rest of their family and Emma cursed herself for not having spotted the surveillance. Counting Sydney that was the second time in a year and as someone who thought of herself as street wise that felt like a personal failing.

Ruby was sitting in the jail cell, her third day and Granny had bought her a change of clothes and food. The older woman was clearly grief stricken and worried, but also confused at her granddaughter's actions. The french fries were cold now and Ruby was picking at her lunch unenthusiastically. They'd all decided that Greg Mendel needed to be somewhere more secure and he was now occupying a room in the town's very creepy high security mental ward.

It was probably going to take a number of years for Emma to stop having creepy nightmares over Nurse Ratchet being a real person.

The station was relatively quiet as David sorted through papers and so the noise of the high heels and the click of a cane stood out and Emma got to her feet, touching her father's shoulder as she came out of her office just in time to see Regina slowly moving into the main office area dressed impeccably and looking dignified and not at all like the mess she was the last time Emma had seen her. Though still as insane as usual with the shoes she was wearing while needing a cane to walk.

"I don't think it's a good idea for you to be here, Regina. You shouldn't even be out of bed yet."

"I'd like to speak to Miss. Lucas." Regina stared over Emma's shoulder at the werewolf in the cell.

"I'm sure you would... but I have a duty to protect her."

Regina sighed, "I'm the crime victim here theoretically. I think I have a right to ask her why she did what she did. I'm not going to hurt her. If I was I wouldn't show up while you and Dudley Doright were here."

"Should I be insulted?" David asked.

"It's ... kind of a compliment," Emma said, "Though she's been ill lately. Regina you ... you know I can't leave you alone with her."

"Then just close the door to the office. You can keep an eye on us and assure yourself of Miss. Lucas safety." There was a pause, "Emma... I really ... think I need to speak to her."

The use of her first name gave Emma pause and looked over at Ruby before back at the Mayor. "I'll be right behind that door and if I see anything at all that makes me uncomfortable I'm ending it."

"Perfectly reasonable." Regina said with a smile.

Emma retreated to the office, closing the door but she and David moved their chairs so they could watch whatever was going on. Regina moved a chair so she could sit down. "I'd try to be intimidating but I really can't stand that long."

"You must be in a lot of pain to be using that thing. Mary Margaret said she couldn't get you to before..." Ruby said quietly.

"As it turns out I wouldn't recommend being tortured twice in a month and Mr. Mendell was nice enough to break two ribs on the other side and make my knee problem quite a bit worse."

"You can't use magic to... you know?"

"I can you know with magic but unfortunately because most of the underlying damage was done with my mother's magic I can't you know." Regina remarked mock vaguely.

Red looked down, "I didn't know he was going to do that. He said he was just going to scare you into telling him what happened to his father."

She raised an eyebrow, "You'll forgive me if I don't think you are that naive."

Ruby shrugged, "I wanted to believe. That he could get you to ..."

"Admit my evil plans with Snow?" Regina so rarely called her wife by that name. "I don't have any. I honestly don't."

"Thirty years of revenge plotting and you aren't mad?"

"Angry sure." Regina said honestly, "I'm angry all the time. And sometimes at my wife and I'm sure she's angry with me. But I lost, Miss. Lucas. And the truth is that ... there is something liberating about that. About not having to be so angry so much anymore." She tilted her head, "How long have you been in love with my wife?"

Ruby shook her head and stumbled through a negative.

Regina smiled, a small knowing smile, "She doesn't know I take it. Neither does sheep for brains in there? They were both lacking in perception back home."

Ruby was quiet. Just watching Regina.

"You've never told her because she's never told me and of my wife's fine qualities the ability to keep a secret is not one of them."

"She... was in love with David."

Regina nodded, understanding, "And you want to protect her. And maybe, if she was willing to leave David she would think about her best friend. But she left David and ended up..."

"Married to a woman who terrorized her most of their lives."

"Instead of the woman who has been in love with her since what? You met?" Regina said quietly.

Red shifted and sat up straighter. "This wasn't about that."

"Perhaps, but really it doesn't matter. Because I don't think you have it in you to conspire and play the kind of games you'd have to have been playing if you knew what was going to happen." Regina stood up. "You may be a wolf but you're not a monster, Miss. Lucas. Take it from someone who is."

Emma, having noticed the change came out of her office, "Is everything alright?"

"Sheriff, I'd like to have the charges against Miss. Lucas dropped."

"Regina I'm not sure that's up to you, this isn't your kingdom."

"No, it's a town, and I'm the crime victim. And I don't want to press charges. I don't think Miss. Lucas understood what Owen was going to do... he used her." Ruby was standing up as well now, confused, "Take it from someone adept at using people."

Emma shifted, "Regina..."

Regina turned to look at the blond woman, "Everyone in town sees me as the Evil Queen." Regina stepped forward to close the distance between her and Emma, and begged, "Please don't let me be the woman who is incapable of forgiveness."

Emma looked into her eyes and nodded a little, taking the keys to the sell and walking over, opening it. "You heard the Mayor. She's not pressing charges." There was a pause, "Which she would be entirely in her rights to do."

Ruby looked at Emma, who was still clearly disappointed, and at Regina. Before slowly stepping out of the cell. Unsure.

"Why are you doing this, Regina?"

Regina offered her a sad smile, "You were trying to protect her. I can't blame you for that."

"Even if I was trying to protect her from you?"

"She needs that in her life. I wouldn't ever take that away from her." Regina looked over at David and he nodded. Snow was the thing they all had in common and just this time, Emma was the one who didn't know what was going on exactly.

"Come on Ruby, I'll take you home." David said with a smile.

The werewolf glanced at Regina as she was leaving, "Thank you."

Regina smiled a little but stayed where she was. Once she was gone Emma looked at her. "You wanted to hurt her didn't you."

Regina was silent for a long time. "Of course I did, Miss. Swan. I want to hurt people all the time. But it's time I stop letting the demons have control." She nodded. "Thank you, Miss. Swan."

Emma nodded and watched as the other woman left, limping away trying to hide every ache and pain that was running through her body.

* * *

Snow waited passed the desk where Nurse Ratchet sat, the heavy ring of keys in her hand as if she was supposed to be there. She was kind of. I mean she was the mayor's wife and Regina was in the office, she had left her there so that she'd get out of the house because she knew her wife was incapable of sitting around all day watching day time tv. Late night infomercials and bad scifi yes, but soap operas, no.

She slipped the skeleton key into the lock and Greg Mendell looked up at her as she walked in. "Wasn't expecting visitors."

"Do you know who I am?" Mary Margaret asked as calmly as she could.

"The Queen's Whore."

Mary Margaret tilted her head, "The Queen's wife." It was the first time she'd called Regina that in ages. It seemed right now though.

"Someone should have told the Brothers Grimm she wanted to eat the entirely wrong body parts..."

Mary Margaret raised an eyebrow, "Are you trying to be crude to get under my skin? Like you think I'm some innocent who doesn't know what those terms mean?" She laughed, "I lead an army and lived as a bandit, Mr. Mendell. I am anything but innocent."

"Certainly not after she touched you. When did that start?"

She rolled her eyes. "She told me she killed your father."

He nodded. "We found this town when I was a kid and she decided she wanted us to stay. When my father tried to leave she tried to force me to stay and play her son..."

Mary Margaret nodded, "And killed him."

"She let me go and when I brought the police back here there was no town and I never saw my father again. She said he was buried up at the old camp ground." He narrowed his eyes, "The woman from the diner says she killed your father too. How can you... she's evil."

"She was." Mary Margaret agreed. "For a very long time. But I believe in change." Mary Margaret paced the cell watching him, assessing him.

"She's a monster. And people like her don't change. And they don't get to settle down with a family and have a perfect life." He said with some annoyance. "Can't you see that?"

Mary Margaret sighed, "I can see that you aren't ever going to stop being a danger to my family. I know that look. I've seen obsession before."

From her coat pocket she pulled a large hunting knife.

He started laughing, not at all scared. "I'm supposed to be frightened that a mousy school teacher is going to shank me? What kind of joke is this?"

Mary Margaret tilted her head, "I think you have confused stories and reality, Mr. Mendell. I may be Snow White, but I'm no Disney Princess. I lived on my own in the woods hunted by knights and surviving for five years. I know how to put down an animal so it won't hurt my family ever again."

"Animals aren't people and you aren't a murderer."

She laughed without humor, "Oh you've been in town and totally missed the goings on. I'm very much a murderer, Mr. Mendell, I killed the Queen of Hearts because she was a threat to everyone that I love and so are you."

Mary Margaret shifted the knife in her hand and moved towards him.

Just as she raised it to strike the knife disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke and they both turned to see Regina standing in the doorway, ghost white, a hand raised, and a look of horror on her face.


	11. Chapter 11

Greg Mendell was laughing and they could both hear his voice as Regina waved her hand and both she and Mary Margaret appeared in the middle of her office. "What the hell were you doing, Snow?!"

"You don't call me Snow much." Mary Margaret said as she cupped her left elbow in her right hand. "I was doing what had to be done for my family. He's not going to stop trying to hurt you. And you know he'll go after Henry... Emma... I won't lose my family. Not again."

Regina pressed her lips together and sighed, limping towards her and cupping Mary Margaret's face in her own. "That's a price I will never make you pay. But that kind of killing. It marks you."

"Regina, it's not the first time I've killed someone... this month."

"And the fact that you think it would be easy is why I want to save you from it. Because that is darkness talking. And once you darken your heart it only..." Regina trailed off and leaned her forehead against her wife's. "My heart is black Snow. I'm not going to let you darken yourself more to protect me."

Regina ran a thumb along her face. "You don't call me Snow much, Regina." She repeated.

"Because ... because I make compromises with the darkness. With the urges I have every day. And it's easier when you are Mary Margaret and not Snow White. But right now I need you to be Snow White. I need you to remember that you are a hero who makes better choices than that. That we can find a better way."

"Regina Mills arguing for moderation?" Mary Margaret teased.

"Well if you are going to go off the deep end and act rashly one of us has to." Regina kissed her nose and ran a hand through her hair for a moment before hugging her. "It's alright. It's going to be alright. But you aren't a killer and I won't let you turn yourself into one. We're going to fight off your darkness and try not to fall into the abyss of mine."

"He's ... he's down there and he's going to hurt you again. He nearly killed you. Look at you ... you're walking around ..."

In pain. Regina didn't really want to answer that because she was in pain so often anyway. Physical or not. "I killed his father. He's a monster of my own making. When you make a monster you have a debt to it."

Regina finally sat down on the couch.

"What happened Regina?"

Regina pressed her lips together, "I, it was right after the curse and everything was so empty. It was supposed to be victory and instead I was sleep walking through this world not feeling... anything."

Mary Margaret nodded as she sat next to her, "The hole in your heart."

"Owen and his father were camping on the land Storybrooke sits so when the curse deposited us here they were in the bubble. And they were ... well the first people I'd encountered in so long who were real. Who were..." Regina searched for words, "They're the first people who I'd met in years who weren't afraid of me. And so of course I managed to break that thing that I wanted most."

"A child." Snow said finally. "You wanted to be a mother. There were rumors back in the Enchanted Forest..."

"Well this went about as well as it usually went back home. And Owen got away... I ... let Owen get away. And then I was so angry that I'd done that that I walked up to Graham and ordered him to give me his gun and I shot his father in the head. I didn't have magic here and it was messy..."

"His brain went out the exit wound. I heard that much." Mary Margaret said quietly.

Regina winced.

"I've seen you kill Regina." Mary Margaret said quietly. "I know who you are."

"One time I might have thought of that as a threat. Or a nightmare."

Mary Margaret reached out to touch her face. "What do we do about Owen." She switched to using his real name because Regina had.

"I think ..." Regina said quietly, "I show a good man more respect in his death than I did in his life."

The next morning they saw Henry off to spend the day with David. Emma gave her mother a hug and asked again if Regina was up to this given her condition. The mayor grunted. She'd relented and borrowed a pair of the sheriff's boots and she was wearing the pair of jeans that Emma was surprised she even owned before they started the hike up into the hills that overlooked Storybrooke.

"Why not just ... poof up there." Emma had asked.

Regina looked at Mary Margaret, "I think this is something I have to do the hard way." Even if her bones hurt and she was still a mess despite spending some magical energy the night before. She was still limping, though she was sure she could make this day without the cane. She expected to pay for it tomorrow.

It was an hour and a half walk up to the camp site. "You still know where it is."

"Surprised?"

"A little," Mary Margaret admitted.

"Some of them blur together. But this was ... well... some of them blur together but not this one." Her murders. How could she tell a woman who had killed in self defense what it was like to have taken so many more.

Once they got to a clearing of trees Regina looked around, sure it was there. There was even a small circle of stones where a long ago camp fire had been. "Seem like home?" Regina asked as Mary Margaret walked around clearly assessing the spot.

"Not really. Far too exposed. Even your knights would have found me in a spot like this."

Regina knelt down and carefully took a pair of trawls and a brush from the bag she had been carrying. She started shifting the dirt carefully, and inches below the surface she found white bone. Mary Margaret inhaled but knelt down opposite Regina and took another gardening tool and started helping her. As carefully as they could they dug up Kurt Flynn. Regina cleaned each bone with her brush and then handed them to Mary Margaret so that she could carefully pack them in their bag to carry out of the woods.

They spent the better part of the afternoon there, making sure to get every bone and taking as much care as possible. When they were sure they had found all of him they walked back down towards town.

To help Kurt find the respect Regina had denied him in life.

Once they delivered the skeleton to the funeral home and they left to head home and clean up Emma Swan and Henry were standing on the street outside. Regina was dusty and sweaty and probably dirtier than she'd ever been in her life in front of her son.

He gave her a hug and smiled up at her. "I was hoping you'd changed."

Regina was careful to hold his head gently and bend her own to kiss the top of her son's head. "I'm trying. I promise you I'm trying, Henry."


	12. Chapter 12

Regina paid for the plot in the Storybrooke cemetery, and made the arrangements for the headstone and the burial. Instead Mary Margaret and Emma brought Greg Mendell a suit and told him to change into it. David, Ruby, and the entire phalanx of dwarfs escorted them to the cemetery for a small dignified service for Kurt Flynn to be laid to rest.

At first he was confused, and still angry, but everyone was careful to make sure that they showed as much respect to the dead as possible even if the living were far too dangerous to trust.

Regina did not attend. Instead she and Henry went to the town stables, a place she hadn't been in all of the curse. They walked in and she had to stop, overwhelmed for a moment by the smell of hey and horses, and thoughts of a place long ago.

"Mom are you okay?" Henry asked.

"Yes," she smiled. "The smell just made me ... it reminded me of Daniel." They walked along the stalls looking at the horses, Regina quietly assessing each before stopping in front of a beautiful bay pony she judged of even enough temperament for a beginner. "Riding is about trust. You have to trust your mount and they have to trust you."

Henry looked at the pony and then at his mom skeptically, "Isn't he kind of short for a horse?"

"She... and she's about the right height for you. She's a pony. Not a horse. Maybe if you get more comfortable we'll move on to a larger mount once you have grown a few inches." She moved a bit of his hair from his face. "My little Prince."

Regina opened the gate and gave Henry some very clear do's and don't in how to behave. She pulled an apple from her bag and gave it to Henry to feed to her. He raised an eyebrow and Regina smiled, "It's not poisoned and she'll like it I promise."

Maybe the question, even unspoken, should have hurt. But it didn't. For some reason Regina felt the most relax she had in ages.

"It reminds you of the man you were supposed to marry doesn't it? The stable..." He paused unsure if he wanted to say the next, "The one Mary Margaret caught you kissing."

Regina smiled a little sadly, "Yes. Daniel was a stable boy and even when he wasn't in the stable he always smelled of horses and hey. It's a very particular thing."

"Are you still mad at her? Mary Margaret."

Regina picked up a brush and handed it to Henry, showing him how to take care of the pony. "Sometimes. Sometimes I don't even associate her with Snow White at all so I'll be mad at Snow but not at Mary Margaret."

Henry frowned, "Why are you mad at her ... still."

Regina sighed and picked up a pitch fork and began to clean the stall while Henry got a hang of what she had shown him. It was as natural as any more refined thing she did and Henry was a little surprised. "I was ... very angry for a very long time and even if I know I was wrong knowing and feeling are very different things."

Henry ran the brush along the animal who seemed to have taken to him, "When I read the book... I knew you were the Evil Queen but I ... didn't know how to feel..."

Regina smiled, even a little of her happy to know that during their rough moments he loved her despite knowing who she was. "Love and hate are very strong emotions. I hated Snow White with all of my soul and I love you and Mary Margaret with all of my soul. But sometimes it just takes some time for love to overcome hate. And sometimes you need help."

Henry knit his eyebrows together, "Like forgetting... when you forgot you hated her?"

"Yes," Regina nodded. "Forgetting to hate allowed me to remember how much I loved her. See Henry you love with your heart and your soul. And you remember with your mind. Love survives. It finds a way." A voice cleared behind them and Mary Margaret, dressed for the funeral and David stood at the gate. Regina nodded, knowing why they were here, "Henry David's going to stay with you and show you more about how to take care of her... I want you to stay with him until we come back. I really... need you to listen this time."

Henry stared at his mother, "What are you up to."

Regina looked at Mary Margaret. "I have to save another little boy. And help him forget how to hate too."

After they left Henry with David, Mary Margaret squeezed Regina's hand and they both disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Appearing in front of the Mills family crypt. "Has to be here?"

"It was the most secure place close to the grave," Regina said, knowing well her wife's history of this place. When they went inside her father's coffin was already pushed to the side and there were flickering candle light coming from below. Emma and Ruby were in the main room, watching Greg Mendell who was sitting on a trunk still handcuffed and wearing the suit they'd given him for his father's funeral.

"So now you're going to execute me? And they're going to let you? That was all some perverse show. Was my father even in that grave?"

Regina shook her head, "It's not a show, Owen. And he was." She moved a chair to sit down facing him. He spit on her and she very slowly withdrew a handkerchief from her pocket to clean it off. Behind her Ruby had stopped Mary Margaret from charging forward. "You have every right to your hate Owen. I did something evil to you. To your father. And you've had a lifetime to dwell in the darkness I gave you."

She reached out to touch his face . He tried to move away but she stared into his eyes and when she did he seemed to freeze.

"I'm not going to take your heart, Owen." Regina said evenly. "I'm going to take away your pain."

"You can't do that." He shook his head. "I ..."

"Your pain drives you. Because it's so overwhelming that you don't know what it would be like without it. Would you even be you? But the thing is that Greg Mendell is not who you are." She had already started to alter his memories. "Owen Flynn had a life before me and he should have had a life without me."

"You can't bring back my father." He growled, "You took him."

She nodded. "I did. And I had no right. And I have no right to take what I'm taking from you now except that I have to protect my family and I owe it to you."

"Your father wasn't murdered. There was no mystery town. He died in a terrible storm while camping in the woods of Maine but he was a good man and he died protecting you. You lived a life trying to be the man he'd have wanted you to be. To be the man he'd be proud of..."

Regina's voice was quiet, firm, the voice of a mother, not for this man but for the boy she had destroyed. She was crying now and it took a long time for her to give him all the false memories and cover the old ones. "And now I need you to sleep."

He slumped forward and she caught his dead weight. Lowering him to the ground carefully and with a hand waved away his handcuffs.

"Are you sure he's safe?"

"He'll sleep. Emma and I can drive him to Boston. Somewhere far away from here at least." Emma and Regina were the only ones who could cross the town line without losing themselves.

"I'm going."

Regina shook her head, "You can't."

"Actually I can. Belle gave me a potion that Mr. Gold used to enchant his shawl." Mary Margaret pulled the vile of blue liquid from her pocket.

"Don't you need something from your old life for that?" Emma asked, and Snow looked momentarily stumped. That she hadn't thought of.

"I have something," Regina said quietly. She motioned for them to follow her to a mirror which she waved her hand in front of and it moved to the side revealing a stark brightly lit room filled with furniture from the old world and ...

"Is this some sort of shrine to the Evil Queen..." Emma said staring at some sort of crazy body armor on a bust with ... "Doesn't leaving your chest exposed miss the point of armor?"

Mary Margaret and Ruby exchanged a look, and Regina shrugged. "Image is an effective weapon. Your mother used to wear white on the battle field and given the amount of blood and mud that was at least as impractical."

Regina moved to a side wardrobe and withdrew a lace shawl with intricate designs of horses and roses."

"You kept it?" Mary Margaret said surprised. "I would have thought you'd have burned it."

"Call it warped sentimentality."

Clearly both women remembered the thing, Emma was still confused though, "What is it?"

"It's a traditional gift made for when a girl comes of age back home. I still have the one Granny made me. I found it in Mr. Gold's shop not long after the curse broke. Though mine is not nearly that ... nice."

"Being a princess will do that..." Emma commented.

"It must have taken ... weeks. That's very fine work," Ruby said.

"It did," Mary Margaret took the shawl. "Regina made it for me. She spent a whole winter doing the lace work."

Regina shifted a little, "Don't get too sentimental. I was also plotting to kill you at the time."

"You were always plotting to kill me," Mary Margaret said dismissively but she took the potion and sprinkled it over the lace before putting it around her neck like a scarf. "Now... let's get Owen Flynn out of here."


	13. Chapter 13

The small group gathered outside of the town hall to see Mary Margaret and Regina off on their trip. David and Emma had managed to get Owen's sleeping form into the front seat of his car, leaning the seat as far back as they could so that it looked like he was just catching a rest on the long car journey. Regina had told them he would sleep for 48 hours.

"Are we sure that you should drive his car?" Emma tried to ask without sounding too judgmental. "If you get pulled over how are you going to explain it."

Regina smiled as she put the their two small bags in the back of the Benz that she would be driving. "What I think she is really questioning is your ability to lie to the police about the sleeping man in your car."

Mary Margaret looked between them, "I'm not that bad a liar."

David, Emma, and her wife answered at the same time, "Yes you are." But Regina shrugged, "Our odds of being pulled over are slim."

She gave Henry a quick hug, he still wasn't up for a long one but smiled at her and that was enough for now. Mary Margaret gave her own daughter a hug before taking the lace and wrapping it around her neck like a scarf.

"Are we sure you don't need one of these things too, Regina?" Mary Margaret asked.

"The advantage of being the person who cursed everyone here. I've already left the town once when I adopted Henry."

"Just be careful on the highways." Emma said still clearly concerned. Mary Margaret had never driven anywhere but within the town limits of Storybrooke.

"Now whose is the mother here..."

Emma looked around at her crazy family, "I'm not sure I want to try and answer that."

Regina rolled her eyes, "You only have one mother in this group."

Emma gave her a sly grin, "Are you sure? Are you really really sure?"

David looked at his daughter seriously, "Emma I have something to confess. I too... am your mother."

Regina rolled her eyes again, "We should get going before all the hugging means Owen wakes up."

And with that Mary Margaret got in his car, and Regina in hers and they drove out of town. Mary Margaret for the first time to see the Land without Magic beyond. They drove down the Maine coast and into Massachusetts getting on the Mass Pike and driving until they reached a rest area. Mary Margaret parked among the cars from all over the country, leaving the keys in Owen's pocket before getting into Regina's car. Regina pulled out the burner cell Emma had pulled from her things and called the police. "Yes, I was at the Gulf on the west bound side near Shrewsbury. I saw this man unconcious in his car, PA plate 2KFL-138. I'm worried he might be sick."

She ended the call, removed the sim card from the phone and tossed the phone in a trash can before getting back on the highway. 20 minutes later a Massachusetts state trooper woke a confused Owen Flynn and took him to hospital to get checked out. He was released a few hours later and the confused man went home and just as Regina has instructed him in his new memories went through his house throwing away everything related to his search for a town that didn't exist and a woman named Regina Mills. And then he forgot about even that.

Heading east away from where they'd dumped off Owen Mary Margaret was now looking out the window at the countryside passing them. On the way down she'd mostly been too scared and concentrating on driving on the highway for the first time to have really paid attention. After a short time in silence she looked over at Regina. "Do we have to go straight back? You know... we never did go anywhere on our honeymoon."

Regina tilted her head as if surprised by that herself. When they'd gotten married they were both living under the curse's imperative not to leave town. They'd always made plans to go somewhere but never had, "I think w e could spend a few days in Boston if you'd like..."

Mary Margaret smiled, "I'd like that very much."

Boston wasn't actually that big a city by big city standards. But it was still larger than any place Snow White had ever seen except on television and then it never seemed real. Regina checked them into a nice hotel in the center of the city after driving around the town and getting lost in the Big Dig tunnels had nearly provoked her to murder and fireballs even without the magic to fuel her dark impulses.

She looked out over the city from their hotel room and Mary Margaret came up behind her wrapping her arms around her waist and resting her chin on Regina's shoulder. "You look like a Queen surveying her domain."

"I look like a Queen because I am one," Regina said with a small playful smile. She rested her hands on top of Mary Margaret's. "Let's see more than the inside of our hotel room."

"I wouldn't mind spending a little time in our hotel room. If this is our honeymoon."

Regina laughed, "I thought I was supposed to be the one corrupted."

"A little corruption is good for the soul. It stops you from being too much of a prat," Mary Margaret smiled. "But I think I'd like to just ... be around with you."

Following the advice of the woman at the front desk they visited the New England Aquarium which was fascinating between Snow's reminders that they should never take Ariel there. Regina didn't have the heart to point out that the mermaid was unlikely to go anywhere with the woman who took her voice. She'd have to remember to return it if they ever met again.

They ran into a group of Revolutionary War re-enactors, including a Benjamin Franklin, which initially confused Regina. "Isn't he supposed to be in Philadelphia."

"Born in Boston." Regina gave her wife a stare when she came up with that random bit of trivia. Mary Margaret shrugged, "School teacher remember. You should totally see Hansel and Gretel in construction paper tricorn hats."

"A mental image I think I'll skip.

"Careful or I'll make sure the next school production is _1776_."

"Shouldn't we, you know, celebrate our own culture instead of the one from this land?"

"I like the songs. And there is less heart ripping."

Regina had to grant the point. "You are just saying that because Benjamin Franklin's look-a-like hit on you."

"He hit on you too. I think that's part of his character."

"Benjamin Franklin did not try to give random women his phone number." Regina countered.

"Still seems in character to me."

When a gaggle of women dressed in period clothing walked by both she and Snow tilted their heads to the side and without looking at each other mumbled, "I do not miss the corsets."

They ended the day at a nice restaurant recommended by the hotel with a view of the harbor. "When I was a little girl and we still lived at my grandfather's court I used to love staring out at the sea." Regina so rarely spoke about her childhood that Mary Margaret didn't want to interrupt. "It was a maritime kingdom and my uncles used to take me out on the water and told me that I could be a great explorer with my own fleet of ships some day."

Regina was quiet again for a long time, "My mother told me that those kinds of dreams weren't appropriate for a lady."

Mary Margaret reached over and touched her hand, "Regina Mills, you've never done anything appropriate in your life and I love you for it."

Regina smiled and squeezed her fingers.

"Today has been wonderful. I feel a little guilty though. I keep wondering if the town is being eaten by a dragon or something."

"Your ex and daughter both know how to fight dragons. I'm sure they'll be fine." Yet after a moment she checked her Blackberry to make sure that she had no messages.

Storybrooke was Storybrooke and a dragon wasn't outside the range of possibilities.

But the only message was the text from Emma telling them to have a good time in Boston. And so she relax and the two women got to be normal for once in their lives.


	14. Chapter 14

They drove back up the Maine coast from Boston in relative quiet. Mary Margaret was still fascinated with the world outside Storybrooke that she'd never seen before and she largely didn't notice the quiet melancholy that settled over her wife. As they approached the town line Regina brought the Benz to a stop a few feet from where she knew the magical barrier was and got out of the car without saying a word. She stood in the road facing the invisible barrier and the hidden town.

Mary Margaret got out of the car and walked up beside her, putting a hand on her wife's arm, "Talk to me, Regina."

Regina didn't turn to look at her but kept looking down the road. "On this side of the line I'm Regina Mills. No magic. No past. No murder. Just a woman. A few feet down that road and I'm the Evil Queen. The magic pulses through my body fueling ..." She paused and bit her lip, "Fueling all sorts of terrible thoughts you'd scold me for if I told you about them. I'm death. The destroyer. And there is a town full of people who tolerate me because they fear that I might turn any moment into the woman of legend..."

"The Evil Queen wasn't a legend Regina. I knew her. I saw her eyes and when I look into yours I know that she is long gone." Mary Margaret moved to stand in front of her. "And yes down that road you are just a woman. Anonymous. Like so many others. But that's not who you are."

Regina ran the back of her knuckles along Mary Margaret's face and offered her a sad smile. "Your life was simpler too... you were a school teacher and you didn't have to lay in bed next to someone who spent so much time trying to hurt you."

"Kill me. You were trying to kill me." Mary Margaret corrected.

"They're not mutually exclusive." Regina commented and looked at her sadly, "We could stay out here. I could go into town one last time and get Henry and we could leave everything about the Enchanted Forest behind. We could let Snow White and the Evil Queen go back to stories..."

Mary Margaret shook her head, "We can't white wash our past away, Regina. It's our past and it's what makes us who we are."

Regina fingered the lace around her wife's neck. "We don't have to remember. Forgetting would be as easy as ..."

Regina started to pull one end of the lace... to take the magical protection away and let the cursed personality reassert itself. Or it would if it had moved more than the few inches before Mary Margaret reached up and caught her arm in a vice like grip.

"I'm stronger than you Regina."

"You always were."

"You don't get to take away my pain."

"Even if I caused it?" Regina said in almost a childlike voice.

"My pain shaped who I am. Just as yours shaped you. I may have married Regina Mills small town mayor but I'm in love with _you_. All of you. I am in love with the fight. I'm in love with the struggle and the searching that you do every day. I'm in love with the woman who has those terrible terrible thoughts and says no." Mary Margaret moved Regina so they weren't looking down road of their choices but instead standing across the center line and she leaned in almost until their foreheads were touching. "I don't want that woman. I might have married her but she is not my wife."

"Snow White didn't fall in love with me..."

Mary Margaret chuckled, "My beautiful idiot, I've been in love with you my entire life, why do you think stripped of hate and fear and everything about our former lives we found ourselves together. Snow White may not have fallen in love with you but she's very much _in_ love with you. The question is, your majesty, can you manage to be in love with me. Because I'm not easy. I'm selfish and I can be self absorbed. I run away from my darkness as much as you wish you could run away from yours and I doubt either is healthy."

Regina was crying, "I'm just going to hurt you more. I hurt everyone I love."

Snow wrapped her arms around Regina, "You gave me a the family I've always wanted. You brought Henry into my life. You helped me find more fulfillment as a teacher than I ever had as a ruler."

Regina shook her head, "That's Mary Margaret..."

"And you made me a hero."

"You made yourself a hero." Regina corrected. "I don't get credit for hunting you like a dog."

"No. You made me a hero because I spent my life trying to live up to a young woman who would risk her life for someone she never met." Mary Margaret reached up and cradled the back of Regina's head, mixing her fingers into her hair. "She's in there. And she's who fights those dark instincts of yours. And she's the woman who stopped me from killing Greg Mendell."

"You wouldn't have ... you wouldn't have liked the person you were if you'd done it."

"You needed me to remember who Snow White was." She held her tightly in the hug. "You don't get to make it better by taking her away from me. And you won't be better for pretending the Evil Queen never existed. I know it's hard. I know you have to fight her every day. But you do and it's glorious."

Mary Margaret finally let go of the hug and pointed down the road away from town, "There is a whole new world there yes. And it's exciting and beautiful and maybe it does offer a kind of peace. But in it you are ordinary. One of a million. Across that line you are a legend. The great and terrible yes. But isn't it better to _be_ someone?"

"It's easy for you to say. You're the hero. I'm the villain."

"So be the hero." Mary Margaret said firmly.

Regina laughed, "It's not that simple. No one in that town trusts me much less wants me to protect them."

"What they want and what they need are entirely different things. They need you. I need you. And I need all of you." She held her hands, "And so does Henry. Because Henry is a good kid and a sweet soul because you raised him to value everything that you didn't have. Even if you weren't a hero to me, which you are, you are one to him."

Regina shook her head, "He sees the Evil Queen."

"Because he's ten. And he doesn't see her anymore. Not really." Mary Margaret tilted her head to the side, "Let him get to know you Regina. All of you. And I think you'll find that he and you will come out much stronger for it. And the rest of the town get the hero they deserve even if it's not the one they want."

Regina shook her head, "You and your hope speeches..."

"My stock and trade. Now get in the car and stop being an idiot."

"That's my line."

"And you can have it back when you stop being an idiot."

Regina shook her head but got back in the car and let Mary Margaret drive the rest of the way home.


	15. Chapter 15

Regina attempted to settle back into something like a routine. The house still felt empty without Henry there though he stayed over the night the night they got back to town, the night Emma had promised that Greg Mendell had delayed with his unscheduled kidnapping and torture, and watching Thor that night it had even felt like normal. Well normal for them. Henry decided to debate who in town might be able to lift Mjölnir which lead to a debate about what being worthy meant. Was someone worthy because they were good or because they were brave. Henry kept glancing at his mom but Regina just kept asking what Henry thought those things meant.

Tucked in to bed he was still thinking and the truth was so was Regina. She crawled into bed next to Mary Margaret and instead of going to sleep lay beside her looking at her slight form.

"You could lift it. You're a hero."

Mary Margaret turned over, "I learned long ago not to argue with you and Henry about comic books, but you are wrong Regina. Being a hero doesn't make someone worthy. There are plenty of heroes who can't lift the Thor's hammer. I think you've both got it wrong."

"What do you think it means?" Regina asked intrigued.

"I think to be worthy of that power you have to be a fighter. I can fight. But I'm not a fighter."

"The hell you aren't."

Mary Margaret smiled, "I can fight but I'm not someone who is drawn to the fight. And I don't mean combat. Knee deep in blood isn't the only sort of courage."

Regina saw where this was going, "I'm in no way worthy."

"I think I'll leave that up to your son to decide. It seems to me he's a good judge of character."

"He's barely getting used to the idea that I'm not plotting everyone's doom."

"Maybe. Or maybe he's trying to decide if it's okay to believe in you again." Mary Margaret smiled and kissed her, "I certainly do."

"But you are a sap." Regina said rolling her eyes.

"And that's why you love me." Mary Margaret grinned, "You are the biggest sentimentalist I know. Or is that mentalist...?"

"I can still light your head on fire."

"Promises promises." Mary Margaret said as she snuggled up to her and closed her eyes.

* * *

The next day Emma Swan had a meeting in the mayor's office in the morning and a budget meeting with the town council in the afternoon. A group that had become entirely too self important now that all of them remembered they were royals.

"I think I prefer dealing with you. At least you're open about being a megalomaniac. Ashley's father in law..."

Regina rolled her eyes, "You don't fit the part Sheriff."

"Is this another attempt to get me to dress in a suit?"

"No..." Regina shook her head, "Though dressing like an adult wouldn't hurt. No I mean they're trying to define you by the old world standards. You don't fit."

"So I should try and be Princess Emma of the Enchanted Forest?" Emma asked sarcastically, "Because that's not me."

"And that's why that attempt would fail. No what I mean is that you've been tentative ever sense the curse broke. Trying to sort yourself out. That isn't you. You are like a bull in a china shop. Your father's daughter. Stop trying to figure out who the Savior is and start being Emma Swan again. The belligerent annoying woman who won't be defined by expectations." Regina picked up an apple and pulled a knife from her desk to peel it.

Emma raised an eyebrow, "Is that some sort of weird reverse psychology, Your Majesty?"

Regina rolled her eyes, "I actually like apples. And no it was honest advise. If you try to play princess with that group of sexist assholes they'll treat you like they treat their daughters."

"Which... from the sounds of it wasn't good."

"Exactly. Go in there and be unexpected." Regina shrugged.

Emma tilted her head, "That's surprisingly useful advice. Are you sick?"

Regina shrugged, "My son and wife reminded me there is nobility in the fight."

"Don't tell me you guys were watching comic book movies again."

"You are really going to have to learn the language, Emma, if you want to be his other mother."

"You make it sound like that's an option in your mind."

Regina watched her, "He's my son. He will always be my son. I have to have faith in him and he wants you in his life. So yes. It's an option if you are willing to work with me."

Emma considered her for a moment. "You did a good job of raising him, Regina."

"He ran away to find his 'real mother'." Regina used scare quotes, "That's not a ringing endorsement."

"Well there was the entire Evil Queen thing." Emma offered. "I've seen a lot of terrible parents. And kids who loved terrible parents. The ones who would wait for their visits with them at the foster homes and the parents wouldn't show up, or they'd show up drunk and the social workers would have to tell the kids they didn't make it. Henry was disappointed in what he found out about you. But there are plenty worse parents in the world and if I'm going to be a good one I think I'd take advise from you any day."

Regina seemed surprised. "Your mother told me I could be a hero by just deciding to be one."

"If I can be a mother by deciding to be one you can be a hero. Though I'm not sure that I believed in those before I fought a dragon."

"I want to be better for Henry."

"I think that might be the best definition of being a hero, Regina." Emma shrugged. "I'd have killed for someone who wanted to be worthy of me when I was his age."

"I'm not sure I could ..." Regina paused and tried to find the right words. "I am not sure I could stand failing him again."

"Which is I think the best reason to believe you wouldn't."

"You have more faith in me than I do."

Emma tilted her head, "From what I've gathered getting to know you Regina that's not hard."

Regina rolled her eyes, "You have a meeting to get to."

Emma checked her watch, "I do."

Just as Emma reached the door, Regina called after her, "If they give you trouble tell them that you have the full backing of the mayor's office."

"Do I?" Emma asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I like you more than them."

"That's a ringing endorsement." Emma remarked.

"Go to your meeting."

* * *

Regina and Henry were eating dinner three nights a week now, Granny's after his appointment with Archie. Though he was starting to miss home cooking he wasn't quite ready to go back full time yet.

"Mom? Can I ask a question?"

"Always."

"Do you still want to hurt people?"

Regina swallowed, "Why do you ask?"

"Gretel and I got into a fight at school. She said ..."

"Gretel has very good reasons for what she feels about me. A lot of people in town do."

"Do you want to hurt people?" Henry asked again.

Regina paused, "Sometimes. But when I have those thoughts I think of you and Mary Margaret and how much I'd loose... and maybe even ... whatever David and Emma and I are starting to have. And that seems like a big deal. I can't lose you."

Henry listened, "You always answer my questions about being the Evil Queen. You lied so much ..."

"I was wrong," Regina said simply. "I thought if you didn't know you wouldn't be hurt. But you hurt more for the lies. Sure there are some things I wish you never found out but if I want to earn back your trust I have to trust you back."

Henry pursed his lips in thought. "That doesn't sound like something a villain would say."

Regina smiled, "But I am one, Henry. I cast a curse out of vengeance and I was so very wrong that I don't know if I can ever make it up to my family. And I don't expect anyone to ever forgive me."

Henry looked at her, "I... you're not a villain, mom."

She smiled and squeezed his hand. "That's nice of you to say but I'm not a hero either."

"You could be."

"Have you been talking to Mary Margaret?" Regina asked surprised.

Henry was confused, "No. I was ... I was just thinking about the hammer. Thor's hammer. Sometimes in the comics he stops being worthy. And he has to work to be better again."

Regina smiled, "Being a hero is not just about saying you are one."

"No. It's about standing up and defeating bad guys."

"The biggest bad guy around this town is me, Henry."

"Well than I think you have to defeat the Evil Queen."

Regina was confused.

Henry grinned, "Every day you do good and not evil you defeat her. And defeating the bad guys is what heroes do."

"I'm not sure it works like that..." Regina said quietly, overwhelmed.

"I'm not sure why it wouldn't."

And with that Emma walked into the dinner, ready to pick him up. Regina was lost in thought for a moment and heard Emma approach, "You ready kid?"

"Yup. Mom's going to be a hero." He announced confidently.

"I... I'm not sure it's that simple."

But Henry shook his head, "We're still working on making sure she believes it. That's Operation Phoenix."

"Operation Phoenix?" Regina asked with a raised eyebrow.

"The bird that rises from the ashes," Emma supplied.

"I know what a Phoenix is. Nasty temper and magical burns that are hard to heal." Regina said.

"All the better description for you I think," Emma laughed.

Henry gave his mom a hug, "Wait, I haven't agreed to this..." Regina said almost in a panic.

"I don't think you get a say," Emma said amused. "Welcome to the world of impossible expectations by Henry Mills. Take it from the Savior."

Henry smiled and started to leave. Regina mouthed a death threat to Emma to which she smiled and went on to leave Regina wondering if she could ever live up to the person her wife and son thought she could be.


	16. Chapter 16

Regina still needed the cane on her bad days, but she was forcing herself to get back into a routine, and so she walked to work at the town hall as she usually did. Without Henry to walk to school it felt more like surveying her domain than morning exercise but some habits die hard. She stepped into Granny's to get morning coffee which wasn't entirely the swill she thought it was and Ruby set a cup down in front of her as if she was expected. Regina raised an eyebrow.

"I can smell you a mile away. Your usual."

When Regina took out her wallet to pay Granny waved her off, "You don't need to pay in here."

Granny said it with a growl and Regina raised an eyebrow, but Ruby answered, "We figure I owe you one. For not pressing charges."

Regina shook her head, "You owe me nothing, Ms. Lucas."

She smiled, "Tough you'll have to live with the free coffee for the foreseeable future."

Regina shrugged taking the to-go cup and continuing her morning routine. She took a turn by the library, still closed, when she saw a man in a red hair wrestling with a young woman. It took Regina a moment to recognize who she was and another to decide if she wanted to interfere in someone's likely entirely justified revenge against Rumple. But she tossed her coffee to the side and threw out her hand. Suddenly Mr. Smee had no energy to subdue Belle French because he was rather concentrating on not being choked to death by the Evil Queen.

And she didn't stop when Belle broke free, and the lack of air caused the hired thug-after all what else is a pirate-to drop to his knees. Regina kept him in the magical choke hold and looked over at Belle who was herself understandably afraid of the woman who had held her prisoner for so long, "Do you know this man?"

She shook her head, "You're going to kill him..."

Regina rolled her eyes, "He'll be fine." She lifted her arm up and he raised off the ground. "Are you attacking women in broad daylight for yourself or did someone hire your rum soaked incompetence to do this?"

He choked out a name, "Game ... of ... Thorns..."

She rolled her eyes and looked over at Belle. "Dear old Dad. Would you care come with me while I go inform him that he really needs better parenting tips."

"My ... my father."

"Owns the florist shop. Probably was trying to rescue you from Rumple. Parents get rather concerned when their daughter decides to date the Dark One. Would you like to come with me?"

"You... you're not going to hurt him?"

"Why would I..." but Belle nodded to the Smee who was still floating and with his hands to his neck. "Oh." She waved her hand and he disappeared.

"What ... did you..."

Regina rolled her eyes. "Jail. Sheriff Swan can deal with the attempted kidnapping for hire. I'd rather make sure we establish for all the jumped up men of the Enchanted Forest that they don't get to kidnap their daughters."

Regina started walking with purpose and Belle followed mostly a bit confused but also wanting to make sure Regina didn't kill her father or worse.

The bell rang as Regina entered the shop followed closely behind by Belle.

"Oh good you found her..." Moe French said as he turned around to find himself face to face with a deeply annoyed mayor.

"Boy are you an idiot, Maurice. But anyone who provokes a war with the ogres generally is."

"Mayor Mills this is a family matter..."

"It stops being a family matter when you hire someone to assault your daughter in the middle of down town. Which by the way I would suspect the Sheriff is on her way over to question you for but I thought I'd make myself very clear. You touch your daughter against her consent again and I'll find every bylaw in the town charter your little business breaks and a few you didn't."

Belle looked even more confused, "Wait that's a threat? You held me prisoner for twenty-eight years in an insane asylum."

Regina shrugged. "I'm not your father. I was never supposed to protect you. He was."

Emma and David arrived just then, probably having gotten the information from the new occupant of their jail cell. "Ah, good the sheriff is here and she can play proper hero."

"What's going on?" David said, looking between the angry mayor, the confused young woman and the defensive florist.

"Welcome to old world politics, Miss. Swan." Regina gestured between the people, "She has terrible taste and is in love with Gold. He apparently has better taste than I'd give him credit for after finding out he was involved with my mother. Her father is... shall we say... not thrilled."

"He's cast a spell on her..." Moe French supplied, "But she's free now and she can come home."

Regina rolled her eyes, and went on for Emma's benefit. "I caught your prisoner in the act of kidnapping her. What you had to have more of a plan than nabbing her off the street."

David looked down at the dust on Moe's shoes. "Been in the mines lately?"

Regina raised an eyebrow, and turned to Belle, "I'm not going to pretend I'm your friend Miss. French."

"The entire tormenting me for as long as you've known me would make that awkward, Regina," Belle supplied.

"But I rather think your father was intending to send you outside the town limits and revert you to your cursed personality. Which... if I remember correctly... has a thing for violent men and a lot of liquor so might not be that different."

Emma raised an eyebrow.

"Sheriff I think you'll find that men back home thought they owned the women in their lives. I won't have that here." Regina walked right up to Moe French, "Your daughter gets to make her own choices. Even if they're terrible ones."

"Didn't she just say something about tormenting..." David asked. Emma gave him a look to say not the time.

"I hear anything has happened to this young woman and I'll have this place crawling with town employees inspecting every aspect of your business."

And with that Regina turned around and limped away leaving all four of them confused in her wake.

Emma smiled, "If that's her version of being a hero we're going to be in for an interesting ride."

David was checking on Belle and they all left Moe steaming in his shop. "I don't understand," she said. "Regina has never done anything for me in my life that wasn't about hurting Rumple."

"I think... that was her version of trying to be better," David said carefully.

"I rather like it," Emma said with a smile. "Fighting the patriarchy and threatening it with red tape. Henry's going to love how Operation Phoenix is taking shape."


	17. Chapter 17

Regina was working late in the mayor's office. Mary Margaret spent more time with friends now that she remembered she had them and without Henry at home Regina preferred to delay going home to an empty house. She headed home after she'd finished with the revised budget only to be surprised when she walked in the big house to hear voices. "And then she actually threatened him with town bylaws…"

David and Emma were recounting the days adventures the middle of her kitchen. The smell of roasted squash reached her before she entered the room to find Henry cutting vegetables for a salad and Mary Margaret at the stove.

"You're making dinner…."

She usually did the cooking. But her wife smiled, "Henry and I thought you could use a reward on your first day of vigilante justice."

"It wasn't exactly…" Regina began.

"Shush. Justice." Mary Margaret said sternly. "And as a reward you are getting your favorite. Well your favorite after torture and dark magic."

David raised an eyebrow, wondering if she was serious, whatever tentative friendship he might be developing with the Queen didn't quite extend to black humor.

"It's terrible for me but I do like it. That is her casserole." She kissed her wife on the temple. "And dark magic. But maybe not call this a celebration. I didn't do anything."

"That's not what Emma said."

Regina looked over at the sheriff who looked annoyingly smug, "Your daughter is as good at keeping secrets as you are dear."

"I'm not about to have to suffer through this hero thing by myself." Emma said.

"Careful, Miss. Swan. I can light your head on fire."

Mary Margaret passed Emma plates to set the table, "Don't worry she only threatens to set your head on fire if she likes you."

Regina looked around, "I think I'm being ganged up on."

Henry smiled, "Mary Margaret and David said that it was a tradition in the Enchanted Forest to hold a feast for a hero…"

"I'm not…"

Snow whispered in her ear, "This time it's time for my advice, Madam Mayor, fake it until you make it. No one said you had to feel like a hero for your son to see you as one." Regina might have had a snarky reply except it was followed by a pat on her ass. "Now go sit down and let Henry see you having done the right thing."

Regina took the casserole her wife shoved in her hand and carried it into the dining room looking around at Henry already listening to a highly embellished version of the story from the morning, and she took a seat, realizing she didn't have to say anything at least. With the last of the food on the table Mary Margaret sat down and raised a glass of wine.

"To our family."

Everyone raised their glass, Henry's with juice, and Regina realized that was what she'd accidentally found herself with.

Not just a wife and a son… but a whole family. One she hadn't been looking for, but one she desperately didn't want to let down.


End file.
